TRACKING NATURE’S HEALTH INDICATORS OVER TIME

Inspiring conservation through science

Pepperwood’s Sentinel Site

Pepperwood’s field station serves as a watershed Sentinel Site dedicated to tracking ecosystem processes unfolding over time by systematically monitoring local weather, soil moisture, stream flow, and the diversity and vitality of local plant and animal populations.Our primary objective is to understand how variability in climate over time and space influences our ecosystem’s health. We call our system a Sentinel Site because we are standing watch over our natural resources, looking forward in order to better understand the climate threats ahead. This term is also in alignment with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) standardized framework for monitoring sea-level rise, an approach we are now pioneering for our freshwater ecosystems.

Pepperwood now also serves as the lead for the new California Biodiversity Network’s Sentinel Site roundtable, with the goal of scaling up our approach in partnership with UC’s Natural Reserve System, Stanford, the Nature Conservancy, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, NASA and others. Our goal with this long-term monitoring framework is to ensure that policymakers, landowners and land and water managers across California have the information they need to make key decisions about our natural resources.

How can we protect the water supply of our streams and aquifers? How can we prepare for flooding during extreme storm events?

How are our forests and grasslands handling more extreme weather? Will they become more vulnerable to fire over time?

Where do our local wildlife live? How are they surviving these intense fire seasons? When and where do they migrate across our landscape?

What places in our region are most vulnerable to fire and why? How can we make people less vulnerable to wildfire while increasing our land’s resilience?

How can we keep more carbon in the ground through stewardship?

Over 70 collaborative research projects based onsite are run by a combination of staff, community scientists, visiting scholars, and university and agency partners.

2130 Pepperwood Preserve Road Santa Rosa, California 95404 www.pepperwoodpreserve.org

Pepperwood Preserve sits within the traditional homeland of the Wappo people. We respect and honor past, present, and future generations of Wappo and their continued connection to this land.

@PEPPERWOODCA

@PEPPERWOODCA

@PEPPERWOODPRESERVECA

PEPPERWOOD FOUNDATION

MILES0 0.25 0.5 1

22 weather stations across the preserve generate more than 675 real-time data streams. This wealth of data informs best management practices for effective long-term stewardship of our natural resources.

To learn more about our Sentinel Site and specific projects associated with the Sentinel Site, please visit our website at www.pepperwoodpreserve.org/what-we-do/sentinel-site. You can view station dashboards and data streams at https://dendra.science/orgs/pepperwood.

M0 0.5 10.25

MilesSentinel Site Monitoring

F Spring Flow Monitoring

") Long Term Veg and MET plots!( Long Term Vegetation plots#* Meteorologic Monitoring!( Pepperwood Phenology Project!H Soil Moisture&< Stream Monitoring!> Wildlife Picture Index#0 Fire Camera

W Flux Tower "C\ Stream Gauging

Breeding Bird SurveyÔÕ Flow Onset1= Fog Monitoring#7 Forest Burn Plots 2017!R Forest MonitoringXY Fuels Treatment Efficacy AssessmentS Grassland Monitoring_̀ Live Fuel Moisture

_̂ Dwight Center for Conservation Science

M0 0.5 10.25

MilesSentinel Site Monitoring

F Spring Flow Monitoring

") Long Term Veg and MET plots!( Long Term Vegetation plots#* Meteorologic Monitoring!( Pepperwood Phenology Project!H Soil Moisture&< Stream Monitoring!> Wildlife Picture Index#0 Fire Camera

W Flux Tower "C\ Stream Gauging

Breeding Bird SurveyÔÕ Flow Onset1= Fog Monitoring#7 Forest Burn Plots 2017!R Forest MonitoringXY Fuels Treatment Efficacy AssessmentS Grassland Monitoring_̀ Live Fuel Moisture

_̂ Dwight Center for Conservation Science

SENTINEL SITE MONITORING